Christopher McCandless in his camp on the Stampede Trail (self-portrait found undeveloped in his camera after his death)
Early years
McCandless was born in El Segundo, California to Walt McCandless and Wilhelmina "Billie" Johnson. He had one younger sister named Carine. In 1976, he moved with his family to Annandale, Virginia, an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. located in Fairfax County, after his father was employed as an antenna specialist for NASA. His mother worked as a secretary at Hughes Aircraft where Walt worked, later assisting Walt with successful home-based consulting company in Annandale. Despite the McCandless family's financial success, Walt and Billie were often fighting and sometimes would contemplate divorce. Chris also had several half-siblings living in California from Walt's first marriage. Walt was not yet divorced from his first wife when Chris and Carine were born, but Chris did not discover his father's affair until a summer trip to southern California.
At school, teachers noticed McCandless was unusually strong-willed. In adolescence he coupled this with an intense idealism and physical endurance. In high school, he served as captain of the cross-country team, urging teammates to treat running as a spiritual exercise in which they
were "running against the forces of darkness ... all the evil in the world, all the hatred."
He graduated from Wilbert Tucker Woodson High School in 1986. On June 10, 1986, McCandless embarked on one of his first major adventures in which he travelled throughout the country only to arrive at Emory two days prior to the beginning of fall classes. He went on to graduate from Emory University in 1990, having majored in history and anthropology. His upper-middle-class background and academic success was the impetus for his contempt for what he saw as the empty materialism of American society. In his junior year, he declined membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, on the basis that honours and titles were irrelevant. McCandless was strongly influenced by Jack London, Leo Tolstoy, W. H. Davies, and Henry David Thoreau, and he envisioned separating from organized society for a thoreauvian period of solitary contemplation.
Traveling
After graduating in 1990, he donated the remaining $24,000 of the $47,000 given to him by family for his last two years of college to Oxfam International, a charity, and began travelling under the name "Alexander Supertramp" (Krakauer notes the connection with W. H. Davies, Welsh author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, published in 1908). McCandless made his way through Arizona, California, and South Dakota, where he worked at a grain elevator. He alternated between having jobs and living with no money or human contact, sometimes successfully foraging for food. He survived a flash flood, but allowed his car to wash out (although it suffered little permanent damage and was later reused by the local police force) and disposed of his license plate. He also paddled a canoe down remote stretches of the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. McCandless took pride in surviving with a minimum of gear and funds, and generally made little preparation. He was, however, frequently fed or otherwise aided by people he met on his travels.
For years, McCandless dreamed of an "Alaskan Odyssey" where he would live off the land, far a
way from civilization, and keep a journal describing his physical and spiritual progress as he faced the forces of nature. In April 1992, McCandless hitchhiked to Fairbanks, Alaska. He was last seen alive by Jim Gallien, who gave him a ride from Fairbanks to the Stampede Trail. Gallien was concerned about "Alex", who had minimal supplies (not even a magnetic compass) and no experience of surviving in the Alaskan bush. Gallien repeatedly tried to persuade Alex to defer his trip, and even offered to drive him to Anchorage to buy suitable equipment and supplies. However, McCandless ignored Gallien's warnings, refusing all assistance except for a pair of rubber boots, two tuna melt sandwiches, and a bag of corn chips. Eventually, Gallien dropped him at the head of the Stampede Trail on Tuesday, April 28, 1992.
After hiking along the snow-covered Stampede Trail, McCandless found an abandoned bus used as a hunting shelter and parked on an overgrown section of the trail near Denali National Park, a
nd began his attempt to live off the land. He had a 10-pound bag of rice, a Remington semi-automatic rifle with 400 rounds of .22LR hollowpoint ammunition, a book of local plant life, several other books, and some camping equipment. He assumed he could forage for plant food and hunt game. Despite his inexperience as a hunter, McCandless poached some small game such as porcupines and birds. Once he killed a moose; however, he failed to preserve the meat properly, and it spoiled. Rather than thinly slicing and air-drying the meat, like jerky, as is usually done in the Alaskan bush, he smoked it, following the advice of hunters he had met in South Dakota.
His journal contains entries covering a total of 189 days. These entries range from ecstatic to grim with McCandless's changing fortunes. In July, after living in the bus for several months, he decided to leave, but found the trail back blocked by the Teklanika River, which was then considerably higher and swifter than when he crossed in April. There was a hand-operated tram that crossed the river 1/4 of a mile away from where he fell in.[2] McCandless was unaware of this because the only navigational aid he possessed was a tattered road map he had found at a gas
station, and he had left on the dashboard of Jim Gallien's truck.[2] McCandless lived in the bus for a total of 113 days.
On August 12, McCandless wrote what are assumed to be his final words in his journal: "Beautiful Blueberries."
He tore the final page from Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, which contains an excerpt from a Robinson Jeffers poem titled "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours":
On the other side of the page, McCandless added, "I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!"
ng proves conclusively there was no alkaloid toxin present in McCandless's food supplies. In later editions of the book, therefore, Krakauer has speculated the poisonous fungus Rhizoctonia leguminicola could have grown on the seeds McCandless ate, aggravating his already weak physical conditions and leading to his possible death by starvation.
Cultural legacy
Krakauer's book made Christopher McCandless a heroic figure to many. By 2002, the abandoned bus (No. 142) on the Stampede Trail where McCandless camped became a tourist destination. Sean Penn's film Into the Wild, based on Jon Krakauer's book, was released in September 2007. In October 2007, a documentary film on McCandless's journey by
folk songs by singers Ellis Paul, Eddie From Ohio, Harrod and Funck, and Eric Peters.
Unlike Krakauer and many readers, who have a largely sympathetic view of McCandless, some have expressed negative views about those who romanticize his fate. Alaskans have been particularly skeptical.
Memorial left by Christopher's parents on bus 142
Christopher McCandless Bus.............................. ............ Billie[mom] at the bus
142 Fairbank City Bus Location ...................................Christopher McCandless'es final self portrait
Chris McCandless SOS note 142 Bus
